Paper pub. date
June 2017
ISBN 9780870718939 (paperback)
ISBN 9780870718946 (ebook)
6 x 9, 248 pages. 9 tables. 1 figure.

New Strategies for Wicked Problems

Science and Solutions in the 21st Century

Edward P. Weber, Denise Lach, and Brent S. Steel
Summary

A "wicked problem" isn’t one with an evil nature, but a problem that is impossible or difficult to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that are often hard to recognize. Classic examples of wicked problems include economic, environmental, and political issues.

We now live in a world full of wicked problems, most of them urgent challenges calling out for creative, democratic, and effective solutions. Ed Weber, Denise Lach, and Brent Steel, of the Oregon State University School of Public Policy, solicited papers from a wide variety of accomplished scholars in the fields of science, politics, and policy to address this challenge. The resultant collection focuses on major contemporary environmental and natural resource policy issues, and proposes an assortment of alternative problem-solving methodologies to tackle such problems.

New Strategies for Wicked Problems will appeal to scholars, students, and decision-makers wrestling with wicked problems and “post-normal” science settings beyond simply environmental and natural resource-based issues, while providing much needed guidance to policymakers, citizens, public managers, and other stakeholders.


About the author

Edward P. Weber is the Ulysses G. Dubach Professor of Political Science in the School of Public Policy at Oregon State University.


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DENISE LACH is Professor of Sociology and Director of the School of Public Policy at Oregon State University.


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BRENT S. STEEL is Professor of Political Science and the Director of the Graduate Program in the School of Public Policy at Oregon State University.


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